Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Massacre Signals Sinister Pak Game Is Afoot In Afghanistan

Massacre Signals Sinister Pak Game Is Afoot In Afghanistan

But the timing was horrendous as geopolitical games are not uppermost on the minds of the global community, occupied as they are in finding solutions to the scourge of the novel Coronavirus

The despicable suicide attack by the Islamic State-Khorasan on a gurdwara in Kabul last week killing 25 people, almost all of them members of the local Sikh community, was a message to both India and the international community that is exiting strife-torn Afghanistan for good. But the timing was horrendous as geopolitical games are not uppermost on the minds of the global community, occupied as they are in finding solutions to the scourge of the novel coronavirus. Kabul, too, is struggling with the virus outbreak. Media reports of a Keralite from Kasaragod being one of the suicide bombers added a chilling edge to the massacre. He is said to be a shopkeeper who escaped the NIA dragnet in 2016 and fled to Afghanistan along with 15 others.

If the claims are validated, he would be the Islamic State’s second Indian suicide bomber. While the IS was routed in its founding countries of Iraq and Syria, the IS-K is fairly robust in Afghanistan. Perhaps by design, the Khorasan has former members of Pakistan’s Taliban within its leadership. The attack on Sikhs apparently is part of the outfit’s agenda of ethnic cleansing. Sikhs used to freely intermingle and identify themselves with Afghanistan, but their population is now thinning.

With the bloodbath coming barely weeks after the US signed a peace accord with the Taliban, the IS-K also seems to have signalled to India that it is in its cross hairs. India developed significant interests in Afghanistan over the years while outsourcing its security concerns to the US. The Indian establishment is already seeing the Kabul attack as the beginning of Pakistan’s proxy war in neutral territory. One of the talking points between the US and the Taliban at Doha ahead of the deal was to wipe out the IS-K together. The US has since started limited joint missions with the Taliban against the outfit. The Kabul attack could thus be a message to the US of the IS-K’s ability to hurt the former’s allies if pushed to the wall. In sum, it is bad news for India, which needs to quickly reset its game.